Your editorial of Friday, November 28, re the number of young, recently educated doctors at UWI emigrating, after receiving a Government of Jamaica, (read taxpayers), subsidy, is an age-old conversation. I sit on the board of a traditional Roman Catholic high school, and also on the board of a Roman Catholic teachers' college. These institutions offer university scholarships to top USA Roman Catholic universities, in return for two years teaching in the local institutions that the students first graduated from, after completing the university degree the scholarship was awarded for.
Ninety per cent of the time our students do so well that they are recruited straight out of university by USA companies, who pay off their obligations to the local institutions. As a result, we are able with this money to offer more scholarships, expanding the programme, as the original scholarship is now open for another student, and the buyout of the previous student is used to offer a second scholarship. Eligibility for these scholarships is that the student must come from a poor family.
US not affordable
I also have a cousin-in-law who was living in the USA, and could not afford a USA university to study to become a doctor. So she came to Jamaica to UWI, as a Jamaican and studied here, received her medical degree, fell in love with another Jamaican doctor at UWI with her. They are now married, have children, and live in the USA.
Every one of these students would love to live and practise their professions in Jamaica, but the crime, the working conditions in our nation, the low pay, the ridiculous utility bills, the corruption keep them overseas, dreaming of coming home, while they send the most they can to support their families left behind.
Fix Jamaica first, our island paradise, and we will not even have to subsidise education, but impose visa restrictions to keep people out. Why do so many Chinese, Indians, Americans, Spanish people want to come and live and work in Jamaica today? Could it be that we do not appreciate what we have?
I am, etc.,
PHILIP SAMMS
philipsamms@gmail.com
The Village Lawyer
Kingston